Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday June 09, 2013 @09:30AM
from the feeling-a-bit-damp dept.

nedko.m writes "NASA's Mars rover 'Opportunity' found clay minerals in an ancient rock on the rim of the Endeavour Crater on Mars. The discovery suggests that neutral-pH water — slightly salty, and neither too acidic nor too alkaline for life — once flowed through the area, probably during the first billion years of Martian history. Opportunity's latest discovery fits well with one made recently on the other side of the planet by the rover's bigger, younger cousin Curiosity, which found strong evidence that its landing site could have supported microbial life in the ancient past. Such observations could help scientists map out Mars' transition from a relatively warm and wet world long ago to the cold and dry planet we know today"

NASA, those innocently naive guys... they should have asked NSA before sending in the rovers.

(ducks)

NASA is part of the NSA. Who do you think puts their spy satellites up?

And it's obvious that the NSA needs to keep on eye on Mars, too. There have been credible [imdb.com] threats [imdb.com] to Earth from that planet and I think the NSA's budget should be increased to *bahDaDa* ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!

The really sad thing is that, of the two movies you mentioned, _Mars Attacks!_ has a more credible initial premise than the recent version of _War of the Worlds_. Seriously, which is a more credible invasion plan: send your ships to Earth to attack or bury your ships on Earth in preparation for an attack on people who don't even live there at the time?

No need for cynicism, this is all about politics and a public that doesn't recognise the immense scientific value of sampling a new world, with or without life. The endless stream of articles about water -> life from NASA is a pretty astute move if they want to keep getting funding.

Finding evidence of past water is an indication that it might have had life. I don't know what would be more interesting, to find that Mars once had life, or that it was habitable for a billion years and never developed life.

Exactly. Life in the solar system would change our view of life in the universe.

Right now, the only instance of a planet developing life is Earth. We extrapolate from there. But the big question (intelligent life) also hangs on the probability of life evolving into intelligent life.

If we find that life is actually a pretty common event in the universe, but it rarely evolves beyond bacterial or small organisms, it might change our equations on how likely we'll find some other space-faring race.

But if we find that life is rare, it'll also change it.

The combination of these two makes a pretty damn big differences on all "are we alone?" questions.

Exactly. Life in the solar system would change our view of life in the universe.

Right now, the only instance of a planet developing life is Earth. We extrapolate from there. But the big question (intelligent life) also hangs on the probability of life evolving into intelligent life.

If we find that life is actually a pretty common event in the universe, but it rarely evolves beyond bacterial or small organisms, it might change our equations on how likely we'll find some other space-faring race.

But if we find that life is rare, it'll also change it.

The combination of these two makes a pretty damn big differences on all "are we alone?" questions.

Your logic is backwards. What we know with certainty is that life in the universe is rare, as far as we know earth is the only planet that has it. Intelligent life is even rarer, given the biomass of earth. Everything else about life elsewhere is simply hypothesis and statistics, but unproven.

Therefore, your statement should work from the what if we find life instead of what if we don't find life. As for now, the answer is "Yes, as far as we know we are all alone."

What we know with certainty is that life in the universe is rare, as far as we know earth is the only planet that has it.

That's total nonsense. And you contradict yourself in the next sentence:

Everything else about life elsewhere is simply hypothesis and statistics, but unproven.

We know nothing about life in the universe. Nothing. Zero, nada, zilch, null. Until we have a much larger data sample, it is all just theoretical. Completely true, and until the intervention of interstellar travel, unavoidable.

That is exactly why we're looking for any clues we might find. That includes not only Mars, but also Europa, for example, where some scientists believe we might find primitive life.

We know for sure that there's life on Earth. We can exclude most of the other planets and moons as they can not possibly sustain any life based on anything we can imagine.

But that's just the solar system. For the rest of the universe, we have, for example, just recently changed our estimate about how common planets are. We thought that most suns wouldn't have any, now we think almost the opposite.

We have just started having methods to find planets of earth size.

But still, life somewhere else in the solar system would be a pretty big deal.

Intelligent life is even rarer, given the biomass of earth.

Wrong. Biomass is not the deciding factor. Right now, our sample size indicates that 100% of planets with life at all will bring about intelligent life. But that could just be due to the anthropic principle. We don't know if Earth is a rare exception, or if there's something to evolution that will result in intelligence in most cases.

Again, getting closer to an answer here, in either direction, would be a pretty big deal.

What we know with certainty is that life in the universe is rare, as far as we know earth is the only planet that has it.

That's total nonsense. And you contradict yourself in the next sentence:

Everything else about life elsewhere is simply hypothesis and statistics, but unproven.

We know nothing about life in the universe. Nothing. Zero, nada, zilch, null. Until we have a much larger data sample, it is all just theoretical. Completely true, and until the intervention of interstellar travel, unavoidable.

That is exactly why we're looking for any clues we might find. That includes not only Mars, but also Europa, for example, where some scientists believe we might find primitive life.

We know for sure that there's life on Earth. We can exclude most of the other planets and moons as they can not possibly sustain any life based on anything we can imagine.

But that's just the solar system. For the rest of the universe, we have, for example, just recently changed our estimate about how common planets are. We thought that most suns wouldn't have any, now we think almost the opposite.

We have just started having methods to find planets of earth size.

But still, life somewhere else in the solar system would be a pretty big deal.

Intelligent life is even rarer, given the biomass of earth.

Wrong. Biomass is not the deciding factor. Right now, our sample size indicates that 100% of planets with life at all will bring about intelligent life. But that could just be due to the anthropic principle. We don't know if Earth is a rare exception, or if there's something to evolution that will result in intelligence in most cases.

Again, getting closer to an answer here, in either direction, would be a pretty big deal.

I think we are arguing the same thing. In addition, I do agree that if it turns out that earth is not the only planet that harbors life, that would be a really big thing. My point being that all the statistics in the universe only speak to the probability that their might be life elsewhere, but those probabilities are based on really simplistic models such as a planet being in the right zone for water (when water is just one necessary ingredient).

Agreed, especially on the 2nd point. We have almost no data on how long intelligent life persists. There's one theory that I forgot the name of that says most intelligent species will probably wipe themselves out once they discover nuclear war.

Finding evidence of past water is an indication that it might have had life. I don't know what would be more interesting, to find that Mars once had life, or that it was habitable for a billion years and never developed life.

But anyway, that's what.

Finding evidence of past water is only an indication that there used to be water. Finding evidence of past water along with copious amounts of carbon, phosphourous, oxygen and a bunch of other minimal requirements would indicate that there might have been life, but just like the abscense of water would make the likelihood of life extremely poor, the abscences of thirty or forty other requirements would do the same thing. First you need the basic building blocks. Then you need them in the right quantities. A

Please look at The History of Earth [youtube.com] to see how the Earth formed, where it got its water and first amino acids/etc. You should see that most of the water came from space and similarly Mars and Venus would have had water put onto them around the same time. Not mentioned in the video is the magnetic field effect in keeping light elements in the atmosphere. Please look up rotation speed of Venus and its lack of magnetic field and the effect of solar radiation on venus and then look at the strange shape of the m

Such a news is by most readers, even at slashdot, frowned upon as its impact and relevance is little understood. I doubt it has anything to do with some misconception on robotics, which I frankly, never really noticed as you mention.

NASA's PR crew also had in the past the bad habit of over hyping mundane or unverified news to get media attention. Crying wolf didn't make their announcements popular among educated readers.

like a trilobite of sorts. however, our rovers don't have a big enough shovel. It seems many people are getting bored with Mars, it has been said (and I agree) don't send another rover unless you bring something back. It would be nice to have another rover that can explore regions where geologists really want to go (but difficult to do the engineering to get it there), but with NASA has a flat budget and it will become more difficult to simply sustain the budgets as they are.

OTOH with so many spacecraft that are operating beyond their planned lifetime, these operating costs drain funding from developmental programs (should we let them die, i.e. Spirit and Opportunity, so we can get on with new stuff?). What about spacecraft to Europa (there's lots more water there, and is there little fishies under the ice?) unless the radiation is so intense don't bother to plan a mission which survivability is zilch?

Regarding Curiosity, it is providing extensive data per sampling, mapping, photos, etc. and provides much excitement for researchers studying the planet. I think issue is such excitement is seen as pretty dry stuff among the general public. Perhaps Mars has a identity problem. We have this huge fascination that seems fueled by science fiction and we get caught up in a human mission to Mars, and one person on another forum called such a mission a myth (it ain't gonna happen with current budgets and only chemical propulsion). Excluding Dennis Tito's flyby which seems to be feasible but not easy.

Mars supported life when it was 'alive': its core was still active, shielding the planet from gamma rays and other radiations. Now it is a useless piece of red dust and rocks, no seismic activity, no earthquakes, no magnetic activity. Its a dead end... We'll find some other proofs of early life on the surface, might find some late fossils hidden under the surface, raise a flag and move on to deal with our terrestrial challenges, as usual!

It was just less than two weeks ago that NASA announced [slashdot.org] the 100th discovery of water on Mars. Being the true trend setters that they are, NASA continues to discover water where it is previously been discovered before.

Wouldn't it be lovely to know what the limits of acidity (or alkalinity) are for life in general. We don't even know, for sure, what the limits are for life on Earth, because we don't have a full catalogue of life forms on earth. We don't have any representatives of life on other planets, and we don't know if there are other possible chemistries on which life can work.

Even within a DNA-and-protein chemistry, we don't know the real limits ; we don't know of any ex